Rs 20,000 crore sought for minorities

A Planning Commission working group has sought Rs 20,000 crore for minorities in the 11th Five-Year Plan. It wants half this amount to be spent on education.

The working group on minorities, headed by Dr Zoya Hassan, a member of the National Commission for Minorities, was set up to review the existing strategies and programmes for the minority communities.

A key suggestion of the group is provision of hostels and monthly scholarships of Rs 500 for girls till Class XII. It wants the amount hiked to Rs 1,000 or more for higher education.

The report of the group says the beneficiaries should be identified on the basis of a 10-point checklist, which may include income of the family, liabilities, land ownership, and the number of educated members. The hostels should cover each of the 600 districts to begin with.

The group has also sought marketing support for artisans of the minority communities to eliminate middlemen. An existing scheme of the National Institute of Design should be used to link artisans directly with the market, a member of the working group said.

The group has also sought "mainstreaming" of wakf boards by making their resources available to local bodies or by enabling boards to take loans from local corporations to commercially exploit their properties at prime locations.